Corporate Sustainability, Competition and Collaboration

Even in areas that lend themselves to a collaborative approach, Dell carves out competitive advantage where possible by withholding valuable proprietary innovations. Despite its extensive collaboration on recycling standards, for example, it developed its own protocols for auditing the performance of its recycling partners and is not sharing those protocols with its competitors. It also developed its Reconnect Partnership , which allows consumers to drop off unwanted used Dell products to participating Goodwill stores, in secret, to gain maximum public relations benefit at launch and presumably to avoid interference by competitors.